Large manufacturing operations, such as paper or steel production, routinely employ very large machines, including motors or generators. Such machines are typically controlled from a remote system that can be located at large distances from the machines. As an example, to control the machines, encoders are often mounted on or coupled to the shaft of the machine to detect machine position and/or speed. In certain environments, communicating the encoder position signals back to the controller and likewise sending drive commands from the controller to the machine can be an expensive process due to the long distances between controller and machine. In such environments, there may be significant electrical interference such that wireless transmission is not a viable option.